Author: Kurn

Over the last seven years, there have been quite a few raids released and boy, the format of and entry into those raids has changed substantially. From crazy attunement chains to ones that were much simpler, from 40-man format, to 10-man format, to 25-man format, raids have changed a lot. We examine them in this episode!

@Sylaurian: To be honest Kurn, Molten Core, because it got me started on raiding and it was the one I had the most fun in.

@Kadomi: Ulduar. I loved the atmosphere and the lore, and Yogg-Saron was one of my absolute highlights. Beautiful raid.

@kenakabones: of all the raids.. its extremely close for me between Karazhan and Ulduar. Mainly because of the variety of the fights and for ulduar; the exponential growth of hard modes and the methods to unlock them. /wanders off looking at the shiny red button

@hestiahdruid: Kara and Ulduar, though I never saw either when it was current content, they were still fun as hell.

Ladies and gentlemen, Episode 48 comes to you today with a few changes to its normal quality. Partway through the Loremaster segment, Majik lost power at his place and so, after much scrambling, we finally managed to get him, myself and our guest, Gina (of healbot.net) on to Skype. The audio quality isn’t great at first, but does improve, though it’s still not at our normal levels of clarity, for which I apologize, and I encourage you all to blame Majik. (#powerisacrutch)

That said, we did get through the whole episode, which came in at almost two hours in duration! Our General Chat topic was… the Dragon Soul nerfs that are forthcoming next week.

An interesting graph of WoW’s subscriptions (all based on officially released numbers and reliable sources). It’s interesting because Burning Crusade came out in January of 2007, Wrath of the Lich King came out in November of 2008 and Cataclysm came out in December of 2010. World of Warcraft got up to 10 million concurrent subscribers before Wrath ever came out. It’s been since Wrath came out that subscriptions initially peaked at 12 million and then dropped off, before a slight uptime in Cataclysm, followed by a decrease.

Keep up to date with Gina at her blog, healbot.net (no, she is not the author of that addon!) and on Twitter, @healbot!

Speaking of Twitter, I asked folks about the nerfs and if they’d use them or not and a few people had things to say. Be sure to follow them!

@Stelshadow: Sovereignty US-Turalyon. 10 man normal. We are making progress on Spine and will probably go with the buff turned off.

WTSHeals: Mixed bag. Some of our raid wants it off. People like me don’t really care since it’s just for personal gain and not achieves. If there was an achieve for NOT using the buff, it might motivate us to not use it, otherwise we’re likely just gimping ourselves.

@BloodyGneisha: I see no problem with turning it off and seeing how far we can go. Our issue isn’t ability, it’s timing – everyone’s schedule sucks and it’s difficult to get everyone together.

@_Rades: We’re working on Madness, so if we don’t get him in our 2 nights before the nerfs hit, maybe we’ll be glad for them. Maybe not? :\ I imagine we’ll do without until we get him, unless we’re making no headway and it’s really stressing us out.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Blessing of Frost! Episode 47 is now out for your amusement and enjoyment, so sit back and relax as Majik and I discuss stuff from Monday, January 9th, including all about LFR, our General Chat topic of the week.

@Restoisepic: LFR so far: pros: easy way to get T13 if lucky and 50% of weekly valour in 2 bosses, Cons: the overall attitude seems to stink additionally, there are not enough sad mooses in there 🙁

@xmolder: I think it’s great, but loses its sheen after you’ve seen regular mode mechanics. Not that mechanics matter.

@RandyLite: LFR I despise it wholeheartedly, I have completed it on 5 alt’s and my main goes weekly for possible upgrades. Reminds me of the trollroics grind for slightly better gear. It teaches bad habits and really brings out the loot whore in ppl. 500 valor is nice but it feels like 3 or 4 trollroics rolled into one 2 hour endeavor.

@thereadycheck: i did a short write up on LFR conflicts. lot of bloggers talking LFR i know, seems like many within the last 2 or so weeks. http://www.thereadycheck.com/?p=1500 @WoWMiri@_vidyala@matticus had a great LFR posts as well!

@Derevka: You think its undertuned to the point where it fosters poor raiding habits? Not “too easy” per say, but poor habits not assisting the tank, not DPSing the strategic target, heroism/lust timing, standing in the proverbial fire…

@e_man41: lfr is a pointless exercise in being mad at people you don’t know over gear you don’t really need

@GottaHaveFaythe: LFR has caused me to lose interest in our progression raids. 🙁 I no longer get that special feeling of seeing a new encounter and then finally getting the kill. No joy or adrenaline rush. It just feels… Blah.. It’s sad! Our 25m team hasn’t been able to pull together a FULL team since it released. We’ve been doing 22-24m kills.

Hotfixes! There were some minor hotfixes that came out over the break and we also cover the ones that came out shortly after we recorded the podcast last time.

The winner of our contest was JoeEgo812! He made us an awesome MOLL-E bumper, which you’ll hear in this very episode. He chose a Lil’ KT as his prize, courtesy of Serrath! Again, thanks to Serrath for providing the prize and thanks so much to Joe for participating in the contest. The rest of you could, you know, submit stuff!

The I Took an Arrow in the Knee meme comes from the new(ish) game Skyrim, which both myself and Maj had the opportunity to play over the holidays. (In particular, this YouTube video – which is loud and NSFW – is pretty amusing.)

Tips from Twitter folks about the back-half of Dragon Soul — follow them!

@JoeEgo812: On Blackhorn, your raid only NEEDS to soak the Twilight Onslaught (large swirly). / Regenerative Bloods are easier to burst down on later platforms if you let them stack up & regen once before starting AOE.

@thereadycheck, re: Ultraxion: noticed so many 10 mans still 3 heal it when 2 healing is simple with good crystal use.

@miss_pewpew, re: fights where you should stack: Stack tight. I see soo many ranged sitting out of healing aoe circles *pulls my hair out*

Please note, we recorded on December 18th, so we don’t talk about these new hotfixes. Especially noteworthy? ZA and ZG have been nerfed and Deepsea Sagefish (the fish used to cook intellect food) now have their own pools!

The biggest thing to note is that we are holding a contest that ends at 11:59pm ET on January 1, 2012. The contest is send in an audio bumper for one of the following show segments:

The best bumper received between now and 11:59pm ET on January 1, 2012, will receive their choice of one of the $10 Blizzard pets in the Blizzard store, courtesy of Serrath! Audio bumpers should be in mp3 format and should be sent to us at:

podcast [at] blessingoffrost [dot] com

Icy-Veins is a great resource for raiders! Lots of description and detail on all the various mob/boss abilities. Of particular note, their comments on the Yor’sahj the Unsleeping encounter.

Firelands is finally behind us, the Hour of Twilight is at hand! As usual, Majik and Kurn share their take on the new patch, although be warned that what they think is interesting about your class PROBABLY ISN’T, so go check out the actual patch notes!

We also did a livestream of the recording process, which meant that we got to interact with some awesome people in the chatroom while we did the show. Keep an eye on Twitter, we’ll announce if we’re livestreaming next week. If we are, here’s the URL: http://www.livestream.com/majikpugs

Kurn will randomly pick a #sadmooseftw person and Majik will randomly pick a #kurngoingret person. The two of us will then have a Magicka duel and whoever wins the duel, will have their randomly selected person win a FREE COPY of the game Magicka.

Speaking of Twitter, thanks to the following people for chiming in about what they’re most looking forward to in 4.3:

@stoppableforce: Transmogrification, pretty much hands-down my most anticipated feature.
@mageic: looking forward to new stuff, just feeling a bit stale currently, so new things to do will be fun
@matticus: New raid content. Done with Firelands.
@psynister: The new DMF and reduced exp requirements to get through OL/NR.
@BeruHeals: MOAR BOSSES TO BLOODLUST!
@Velystia: Transmog, new dungeons, new raid… a reason to log in again. 🙂
@MathiasSchnell: The Fangs of The Father questline and rewards! 😀
@DuridJaymz: Looking forward to… hmmm… Actual “difficulty” and “choice” in the feral rotation!!!
@hestiahdruid: Transmogging gear, and kicking Deathing’s ass.
@kenakabones: 4.3 – transmog, new 5 mans *they’re fun* and dragon soul!
@Kamilla_of_ET: my wings!!! I can’t wait to have my wings again hehee 🙂 yay for T6!

Ladies and gentlemen, one year ago, we embarked upon a crazy adventure that has led to a lot of laughter, some bleeped profanity, many late nights, a few early mornings and, well, a LOT of time talking about WoW together and with various guests.

Episode 42 is our one-year anniversary episode and it is totally packed with awesome and clocks in over two hours in length, but it’s absolutely worth it. Why’s that? It’s because we contacted some of our guests from our most-downloaded episodes and somehow convinced three of them to make their returns to the show!

Apotheosis of Eldre’Thalas is a 25-man 6/7 HM Alliance guild and seeking a retribution paladin and a hunter, so check us out and apply now!

Monolith, a 25-man 7/7 HM Horde guild on the US-Llane server, is seeking a DPS death knight.

Business Time of Moonrunner is a 10-man 6/7 HM Alliance guild, seeking two quality players, preferably on the Conqueror token (priests, paladins, warlocks!).

#sadmoose shoutouts! A bunch of people tweeted us with the #sadmoose hashtag and got shoutouts on the show. Here they are on twitter — follow them! 🙂

@Technophobia: Why is #sadmoose sad?@FFPMMarc (MegaCode): #sadmoose@RandyLite: Do previously tweeted #sadmoose count?@YAWoWB (Rooster): what kind of #sadmoose ? Any #sadmoose or a very specific #sadmoose ? Does the #sadmoose have to be WoW related or IRL?@JoeEgo812: The sweet bleating sound of the #sadmoose@DangDangFool: Sinuses? #SadMoose@PotatoeWoW (extra shoutout for #craw!): Nerfs ftw. Heroics out of reach for my guild. Heroic Ragnaros? Impossible anyway, so idc how hard he is. #sadmoose#craw@gumhead: I love the #sadmoose podcast…. errrr….. I mean the Blessing of Frost podcast.@facemauler: just to irritate Majik even more… #sadmoose

And we also got a tweet after we recorded the show:

@badtauren: was a #sadmoose till I found BoF on stitcher. Its about time yay!

And @DSatt57 sent us a Tip of the Week! “When doing the Harvest Week quests the first day, get 25 of each main ingredient. Start in SW, go to IF, back to SW, then Darn.”

Once again, thank you to all our listeners for your support, interest and interaction with us over the last year. Without you, we probably would have given up on this nutty idea back around Episode 6. We hope you’ll stick around for many more episodes to come!

Welcome to Episode 41 of Blessing of Frost! This week, our topic is Heroic Ragnaros. With just 2.5% of Firelands raiding guilds at 7/7 HM (according to guildox.com as of this recording), does this constitute a problem? What about the fight itself, are the mechanics just that challenging? Majik and Kurn explore the concept and design of Heroic Ragnaros this week.